


do androids fear the very miracle of their existence?

by MAVEfm



Category: Blade Runner (Movies), Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Androids, Boys In Love, Crying, Happy Ending, Love, Love Confessions, Love at First Sight, M/M, Polyamory, Replicants, lots of crying??? i didn't mean for there to be so much, so much love jfc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 11:38:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12320307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MAVEfm/pseuds/MAVEfm
Summary: It doesn't matter, he's a Replicant, it's not real.He feels so fake but he loves them allHe wonders if its just implanted memories, false happiness given to him by his manufacturers.





	do androids fear the very miracle of their existence?

**Author's Note:**

> this is so sappy but I love blade runner 2049 so goddamn much

 

“Would you like to request a song? Sir?”

 

So perfect was their meeting.

 

“I enjoy music from the 1970’s,” R shrugged.

 

So beautiful that R had wondered if it had been a hoax, an implant from his manufacturer.

 

“Something soft?”

 

The way the light shined just so, making his blood red suit shine. Or the way his hair had been so perfectly styled yet disheveled and messy so naturally.

 

“I’ll see what I can think of,” He had tilted his head and blinked. His eyelashes framed eyes that seemed to be a color made to conjure memories. R had no real childhood to remember, at least not one that wasn’t implanted.

 

But he thought of the hot chocolate that his grandmother had made him on nights they could see their breath wisp through the air.

 

B sang a song that R couldn’t remember the name of. The piano was so real, made of real wood they had said, _too bad a fucking skinner has to be the one to play it_.

 

_Will you shut up about that? I want to enjoy my evening._

 

Then R left.

 

They had made him with a good memory. You had to have one if you were going to be a bookkeeper, not just of financial records, but of real paper and books.

 

Words in real ink pressed onto paper made from real trees.

 

Paper had no electronic records, he had simply memorized every shelf.

 

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” R had asked him.

 

B had shrugged, “Something old I suppose, real.”

 

“I have many books about music,” R tilted his head, as if to echo their meeting in the club, where the smoke had made B look ethereal.

 

B blinked again and R felt embarrassed he could ever mimic something so bittersweet and nostalgic.

 

“I would like that,” B nodded, “I’d like to open a card, B9 dash four one two dot eight seven.”

 

B9-412.87

 

R nodded and handed him the card and mused silently about how the serial was so sweet on his tongue.

 

Later, he would hand him a book with his own serial inside.

 

R9-830.86

 

He could get in trouble for defacing the book, but no one had to know. The writing was so small.

 

“We keep meeting,” B9-412.87 said, smiling, his teeth so white against the dimness of the market.

 

R held his groceries in hand and smiled back, “I have nothing against that.”

 

“Me neither.”

 

B shifted, his own groceries seemed heavy.

 

Nexus 9 models are built polite.

 

“Would you like help with those?” R asks, feeling hesitant.

 

“Please, thank you,” B smiles wider and the strange tension R has built in his intestines seems to subside.

 

“Would you like to trade serial’s?” R asks, “Officially.”

 

“I thought the one in the book was official,” B tilted his head in that way that made R remember implanted memories.

 

“It was an attempt at romance… the poetic kind,” R looked down at his feet.

 

They helped each other up to their apartments and traded serial’s, officially.

 

“I’d say we’re friends now.”

 

B had smiled again, real, his lips were pink and R smiled back, wondering if the crinkling by his eyes was off-putting or sweet.

 

“How do you feel about personal questions, R?”

 

“They’re strange,” R shrugged, “It seems like nothing about me is personal.”

 

B nodded in understanding, “I like them anyway, they make me feel real.”

 

R looked up at him, “But you are real.”

 

“Tell the organics that,” B tilted his head in a different way, an emotional way, rather than the nostalgic way, “They call us skinjobs, skinner, _android,_ like we’re robots, as if we have nothing on the inside.”

 

R felt the pulse in his neck, “I have a heart, it beats.”

 

“The organics can feel it as much as they want, they could cut me open and see our insides, our bones, our heart, and they’d still think of us as just skin.”

 

“Not all of them,” R shifted closer to him, thinking of Kenneth Harris, his downstairs neighbor.

 

“No, definitely not all of them.”

 

R couldn’t read B’s expression.

 

Nexus 9 models weren’t supposed to raise their voices, but B had come close.

 

They had been outside of B’s apartment.

 

A man, an organic, as B would call him in the slang he had picked up, was angry.

 

_FUCK you SKINJOB_

 

Spray-painted on the wall outside B’s apartment, not on his door, as Ryan was used to in his own building. Instead, it was on the wall opposite, the first thing B9-412.87 would see in the morning as he headed to work.

 

R looked on it sadly, seeing how all the more cruel it was, until B was blamed and told to clean it up himself.

 

“You fucking bitch, fucking skinners, you take our jobs and my fucking money, you peice of shit!” He pushes B and R has to hold back a gasp, his shoulders raise and he wants to step forward in between them.

 

But B is fine. “You lost the piano because you were always drinking, sir.” The _sir_ , seems tacked on, fake, strained.

 

“And they replace me with a fucking _android_ , you’re made of four letters you _fucking_ skinner-”

 

The man is pushed back by R, not letting his anger be apparent, but he knows how much B resents being called that: “B9-412.87 is _not_ an _android_ … Sir.”

 

The man spits on R’s shoe, “You don’t even have real fucking names-”

 

B pushes him into the wall, hard, “Don’t talk to him like that!”

 

There’s a small dent in the wall as the man pushes himself back to his feet. R doesn’t want to look at the spit on his nice shoes, the ones he bought just a week ago because B had pointed them out in the store and said he liked them.

 

The man punched B and R says: “No!”

 

But B is still a Replicant. The punch sends him back a few steps, but unbothered. “Mr. Bryar-!” The anger is obvious on his face and R admires him for it as he steps in between them.

 

Mr. Bryar goes to punch him.

 

R is unaffected but the wound to his courage would be felt for a few weeks, even if the bruise would fade within hours. _“Son of a bitch-!”_ Mr. Bryar holds his bleeding fist up again and B grabs it, squeezing.

 

R clumsily grabs his wallet from his pocket.

 

“Let me _go-!”_ Mr. Bryar halts when the glowing _Warrant for Defense_ is shoved in his face.

 

“Please sir, if you go ahead with this, I am legally allowed to defend myself,” R pleads with his eyes, “Along with… With my friend, and then I will be able to testify against when the-the LAPD takes my Baseline.” Mr. Bryar seems to freeze in place.

 

Then he shoves B away.

 

He wouldn’t win against a Replicant.

 

Then they’re inside.

 

B’s hands begin to shake and R sits across from him.

 

He can’t help the urge to glance around, B doesn’t seem to mind.

 

His home is more colorful than R’s, more decoration, a piano sits in the corner, beautiful and elegant. R can’t tell if it’s real or not.

 

There is a minute of silence, until R puts B’s hands in between his own.

 

“Thank you,” B says, pulling one hand away to wipe his eyes, “I’m so scared of Baseline.” His words shake. He returns his hand to Ryan’s hold.

 

“Me too.”

 

“H-how many times did they-” B sniffs and holds back his sudden tears, “How many times did they beat you before…?” He indicates to the Warrant for Defense.

 

R wants to lie to Brendon, say it was only three times, or five but- “Seventeen times.” R answers.

 

The LAPD awarded him a Replicants only solace against retirement after seventeen times.

 

Seventeen times, where R did nothing to defend himself against hateful and angry organics.

 

He remembers the first time.

 

Behind the apartment building, away from the light of the Atari and Pan Am advertisements. An unaware dancer for the Joi Model 2-8 flickered into existence and her celebratory yells and dancing disguised his attackers grunts and slurs. R had watched the hologram with a blank face. She had smiled at him, waved, and asked him if he wanted to party. He had smiled back.

 

Then his attackers stepped through her happy ones and zero’s and attempted to beat his face in.

 

He doesn’t want B to become angry again and he fears hot fire breaking through his tears.

 

But B is understanding.

 

“I don’t understand,” His tears fell softer now, “Why they do this to us, our people-”

 

“The saying has been around since forever, since before Replicants, that people fear the things they see as different,” R rubs his thumb on the back of B’s hand, his skin is soft and he wants to be closer. Close enough to rub his back and run his fingers through his dark hair.

 

“I know…” B looks down at R’s thumb, “I know.”

 

“And we look so much like them,” R continued, “They’re scared of how close we are to them, how much of a mirror image we are… Mr. Bryar does not hate you, he’s scared of you because you can do all the things he can do.”

 

“It’s fake,” B said, almost spitting out the words, “I’m fake, it’s not talent it’s _fake-”_

 

“Wallace only made you with the _idea_ that you could play music,” R insisted, “They made me with the idea that I would be used for record keeping, but that’s it, they have no control how that happens, we choose those paths and go down them however we want, I didn’t need to choose the Library, I don’t need to know where every book goes and who it’s by and why they were written and who the author was, I sure as _hell_ didn’t need to _read them_ , to become personal and attached to them and _love_ them.”

 

The swear had shocked him and B, whose tears had frozen, dripping down his face as he stared.

 

“It’s-it’s the same with you,” R felt his face grow hot, angry, but his lip was shaking, fat tears formed in his eyes and he blinked them away, “You didn’t have to do any of this, you didn’t have to learn the piano and sing and perform or do _any_ of that, you could have just catalogued it, tuned instruments, they don’t have any control over what _we_ choose _for ourselves,”_ He squeezed B’s hands, “You’re not fake, your talent is real because you chose it, you didn’t have to do anything, but you did, you chose to _love_ music and performing and that _can’t_ be fake.”

 

B sat with his mouth agape, he blinked and his eyelashes fluttered and even as his eyes turned red from crying and his body shook, R found him beautiful.

 

“We’re made for the idea of something that they assign us to,” R wiped his tears away, “But we can choose to be passionate, and love it, we can choose what that idea means to us, or even if we want it or not, that’s what makes us real, that’s what makes you real… And you’re-” R swallowed and almost bit back his words, “You’re the most real person I’ve ever met.”

 

He stayed the night, and R resigned himself to the couch.

 

It was late when B came out of his room, wrapped in his comforter. He hesitated in the door and R looked up at him. B took a shaking breath and turned back around to his bedroom.

 

R stood, and followed.

 

In B’s soft bed, they could only stare at each other and the reflections their eyes cast from the dim light.

 

They both woke up together and had a small breakfast.

 

Out in the hall, someone was scrubbing away the spray-paint, bent close to the wall and pressing a scrub into the wall.

 

“Good morning,” B and R stood in the doorway and their hands brushed, knuckles on soft knuckles. “S9-902.87?”

 

S9-902.87 looked back to smile at them, he was disheveled and broad, and his smile was small but genuine, “Yes, good morning, you’re B9-412.87? I live down the hall.”

 

“You didn’t have to clean that-” B started, shaking his head.

 

“No,” S shook his head, still smiling, “But I wanted to.” He looked to R and stuck out a hand, “S9-902.87.”

 

R shook it, “R9-830.86.”

 

“It’s nice to meet you both,” S nodded, “We should get more familiar soon.”

 

“Please,” B’s smile shook, “We-we will.”

 

They helped him clean until only a black smudge remained.

 

Without meaning to, or maybe they had, the word _Skinjob_ had become unreadable, smudged over again and again until it was nothing.

 

They memorized each other’s serials and R’s smile seemed to hurt his face.

 

S was just as real, fixing hovers and anything mechanical. He had memorized every repair method for anything in the city. He was a walking library for mechanics, like R was a library of memorized poetry and call numbers and book passages. Like B was a library of music and symphony, of memorized lyrics and chorus.

 

R had never been so surrounded with the passion they carried, their very fingers twitching with desire.

 

He loved them.

 

They sat in R’s home and ate food he had made for them.

 

They laughed at stories and listened so closely to every detail. R felt real, he felt it in his chest and it made him ache comfortably against the feeling.

 

Nexus 9 models were not supposed to lie, but to each other, the truth felt genuine.

 

“I withheld something from you,” B looked at R and S paused, quiet, “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell you something.”

 

R nodded, “What about?”

 

“When we first met, for real, in the Library,” B tilted his head and R couldn’t bring himself to be bothered by the confession, “You had thought we happened upon one another, like we did with S,” S smiled into his meal, “But we didn’t, I asked the bouncer, A9-531.80… to find your serial.”

 

R remembered the bouncer, a short man with almost red hair, he had tattoos, a rarity for Replicants.

 

“I wanted to see you again,” B’s cheeks dusted themselves with color, “I’m sorry.”

 

“I don’t mind,” R said, instantly, “I wanted to see you again, but I didn’t know how,” He paused, “Thank you.”

 

“I’m lucky to know you both,” S looked down at his lap, “You’re both so real.”

 

R had felt himself lucky as well, not for meeting them, but for knowing them, understanding them. He felt lucky to be able to see B, and understand his beauty of self and to see S and wonder at his confidence and easiness.

 

He felt lucky to have met Jon, who was so beloved by his boss he was given a name.

 

“I grow plants, real and synth,” He informed R as they walked through the Library halls. His gaze was tired and welcoming, and R felt relaxed around him.

 

It had been almost a year since he had met B, a few months since he had met S, and now Jon.

 

Jon was real, like B and S, his name didn’t make R jealous, it only added to his poem.

 

Jon was calm and loose, he was growing a beard and he understood nature and growth. He had seen real green, a real daisy, and had brought R a real petunia to confess his admiration.

 

“You’re so beautiful, not like any organic I’ve ever met, your mind is so incredible, like the books are right there when you recite,” B and S were present, in R’s apartment and B, who was so emotional about every aspect of every thing, had teared up.

 

“I see you in the orange light of the Library and you’re like an angel.”

 

“Can this even happen?” R asked, “We’re just Replicants”

 

“Show me a rulebook, R,” Jon held his petunia’s tight, “Show me the place where it says Replicants can’t fall in love and I will turn myself in for a Baseline.”

 

R accepted the flowers as his face turned pink.

 

“If you love me, then I love you,” R felt so drained as Jon stayed over to sleep in his bed, “You’re so real.”

 

He felt gutted and empty.

 

Yet so full as he realized he had had the best year of his life.

 

He had never cried so much.

 

The petunia’s lived, miraculously, in his claustrophobic home.

 

B frowned, out of confusion, more than anything and R thought of him like a prayer, or a poem, every word and sentence scrutinized over until perfect and yet he was so effortless.

 

Jon would smile and R thought of him like a sonnet, he could synchronize with his very heart.

 

S had grease on his fingers and arms, exhausted and sweaty from work, and R could see him like an encyclopedia. He was so full of wisdom and patience.

 

They were in the Library, sat around a table as R organized shelves. He didn’t care to shush them as they laughed and smiled.

 

A book made it’s way into S’s hands, “This is my favorite,” He said, “Not _most_ favorite, but I love it.” He smiled and R snorted.

 

“Why do you love it?”

 

“I don’t know, I didn’t have a real childhood, but I think my mom read this to me,” S looked at each of them, “It’s about love I guess, she was sappy like that, but I didn’t understand it.”

 

R knew it well and S opened it to read, “Give us a quote,” B leaned on his fist, “Like your mom would read it, sappy,” His smile was cheeky and R couldn’t look away.

 

S shuffled, embarrassed, “I don’t think I could do it as perfect…”

 

Jon urged him on, “You’ll say it much better, it’ll be real,” His eyes shined and Ryan was sorry he couldn’t capture the image forever.

 

Spencer laughed, small and full of breath, and flipped a few pages, savoring the feeling of real paper, “I guess… I remember this one… ‘He doesn’t want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn’t love you, but I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and,’” S paused briefly, blushing, “‘And ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.’”

 

R blinked and Jon clapped, B mocked wiping away a tear even though they all knew it was real.

 

So perfect this moment was, R would wonder if it was implanted by his manufacturers.

 

Jon kissed the back of his hand, “I understand it,” He said and R had to agree.

 

Their lips would brush behind a shelf.

 

S would appear, out of breath and covered in grease from a hover in the doorway of B’s apartment as they prepared a lunch.

 

“I was beat up, but I’m okay,” Spencer touched a fading bruise on his shoulder, “There was a Blade Runner there.”

 

R reeled back at the words.

 

“What did they do?” B’s hot temper shined in an instant.

 

“He stopped them,” S held out his hand and Jon grabbed it tight, as if S would slip away with the Blade Runner, “He really stopped them.” R wiped B’s tears away.

 

They would eat and B would get to his feet, “I don’t know any songs to say this.”  

 

R leaned forward and grinned, “Say it anyway.”

 

B blinked rapid and delicate, then sat back down quick to grab S hands, covered in bruises.

 

“I should say it now, I’m so scared around you, but…” B glances at R through glassy and tearing eyes, “R told me that it’s our choices that make us real and I- I choose to be with you and Jon and R and I can’t stand seeing you beat up or take a Baseline but I don’t know how to say it ‘cause I’m not like Jon and I’m not R-”

 

“If there’s a damn Rulebook, you show me where it says that I can’t love you back.” S pushes hair out of B’s eyes and Jon leans into R and R can smell his hair with it’s soft smelling shampoo.

 

R feels strange.

 

He spends a day alone.

 

The Library is hushed and calming, it wraps him in the smell of old paper and hardcovers.

 

Jon had given him a daisy, a real one, and it’s soft petals greeted him at his desk.

 

He felt disconnected.

 

What if his wonderful, real year, was changing? Turning sour?

 

He almost cried.

 

He’d cried so often in his year.

 

He allowed himself one more time.

 

He loved them so much, he felt he would burst.

 

But he’s a Replicant and there must be a Rulebook.

 

He loved Jon, he loved Jon it so much it made him feel as if his heart was stopping.

 

But he loved his books, and he loved S and B.

 

So much it felt fake.

 

He wasn’t real, things that were real loved with everything and one thing.

 

The Library feels so empty without their melodic laughter, without S’s twitching fingers or B’s shining and nostalgic eyes or Jon’s serene and quiet energy.

 

He’s alone for a week.

 

Jon leaves him messages, “I want to see you again, I feel like I’m choking…” He pauses, “But if you need this, I’m okay.”

 

S leaves him messages, “Come back when you’re ready, I hope you’re okay.”

 

B leaves him a message, “I miss you, you make things so sincere.”

 

R calls back, “I’ve just been busy, I miss you too.”

 

Then B is taken for a Baseline.

 

R has never been so afraid, he sprints to the front doors of the LAPD.

 

The building scares him, so dark and ugly, it’s the only building for miles without any advertisements, without any Joi models dancing outside. It scares him, when something is so devoid of color and light.

 

Sony greets him from across the street: _A future with opportunity! As Sony puts together it’s latest advancement in-_

 

R looks away.

 

He can’t bear to push the doors open and step past that threshold.

 

He feels his knuckles brush against something soft.

 

S.

 

He’s squinting to hold back tears.

 

“It’s just the waiting room,” S says, to himself and to R, “We can make it in there.”

 

“Jon can’t get out of work.”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” S shakes, “He’s still here.”

 

They hold hands in the waiting room.

 

R can feel the stare of Organics and wants to press into S and disappear. “I love you,” He tells him and S wipes his eyes and brushes his cheek.

 

“I love you,” He says as R stares at the floor, “He’ll make it.”

 

B’s eye is swollen and his lip is bloody, “Cells,” He mutters, falling into S and R’s arms, “Cells.”

 

“Sh,” R says tenderly, “You’re okay.”

 

Back in R’s home, B becomes aware again. He smiles, “Only two points off… You should have seen the Organics.”

 

“Sh,” R says again, smiling.

 

Jon comes with a single rose.

 

“It’s real,” He says, “But not as real as you.”

 

“I made it,” B laughs, “I made it Jon and I love you so much.” Jon smiled through tears.

 

“I love you too, I love you too.”

 

Jon and R kissed in the door, “I love you,” R almost gasped.

 

“I love you.”

 

Spencer kissed Jon goodbye, giddy as they told each other the same, and after a minute he left with a peck on B’s cheek and R had to stop him in the door to bury his face in his neck.

 

The moment was so perfect, his lips still tingling with Jon’s kiss and the smell of S’s cheap synth cologne, Ryan would wonder if the memory was fake, an implant from the manufacturers.

 

It grew dark, or darker than it already was.

 

The rain slowed to a drizzle.

 

“You can stay,” R said to B, even though he was begging behind pleading eyes. He can’t bare to have B out of his sight.

 

“I will,” B says, soft and careful.

 

And then R is awake at three A.M., tears streaming down his face.

 

He wraps his comforter around himself, like B had done so long ago.

 

He dries his tears and meets B in the living room, his tiny television displays a children’s cartoon and B’s eyes reflect it like twin moons as he looks up at R.

 

“Sleep with me tonight?” R can hardly speak, his voice hoarse and heavy.

 

“Of course.”

 

Then they stare at each other, eyes reflecting the Atari ad outside R’s window.

 

“I love you,” He finally stuttered out, shaking with tears as he swiped his thumb over B’s bloody lip. “I think I have since we met at your club.”

 

B sucks in a breath and smoothes R’s hair out of his face and before B can respond R continues, “I feel so fake saying it, like I don’t really mean it but I love you but I love Jon and I love S and that’s not genuine it’s just all fake-”

 

“I love you,” Brendon shakes his head, “It’s not fake, you’re the most real out there and I love Jon and I love S and I love you, it can’t be fake, show me where it says it can’t happen, we’re just as real as organics are, just as human as they are and if they can love, so can we.”

 

The moment was so perfect.

 

R could taste the healing cut on B’s lips.

 

So incredibly beautiful it could have been fake.

 

The way the light reflected in B’s eyes and the way his hair fell, messy and tangled.

 

Implanted, he would think, by Wallace and the manufacturers.

 

The way their feet tangled and how his fingers spread over B’s shoulder blades.

 

But even a Replicant can know what’s real.

  


**Author's Note:**

> poly is the only good ship and we will return with your regularly scheduled updates of Internal Exposure also the blade runner that helped Spencer is K cause I love that boy


End file.
